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Detectors Ensure Function, Safety of Aircraft Wiring

Sunday, 01 January 2012

NASA Technology

Pedro Medelius waited patiently in his lab at
Kennedy Space Center. He had just received word
that a colleague was bringing over a cable from
a Space Shuttle solid rocket booster to test Medelius’
new invention. Medelius was calm until his colleague
arrived—with about 30 other people.

“Talk about testing under pressure,” says Medelius.
“There were people there from the Navy, the Air Force,
and the Federal Aviation Administration.”

After the group’s arrival, Medelius took a deep breath
and connected his Standing Wave Reflectometer (SWR)
to the cable. He wiggled the cable around, and the display
showed a fault (a short or open circuit in wire) about an
inch and a half inside the connector on the cable. His
colleague questioned the results, because he had already
checked that area on the cable. Medelius used the SWR
to check again but got the same result. “That is when we
took the cable apart and looked inside,” Medelius says.
“Lo and behold, that was exactly where the fault was.”

The impetus for Medelius’ new wire inspection
technology came about in 1999 when one of the space
shuttles lost power due to a fault somewhere in its more
than 200 miles of electrical wiring. “The backup circuit
was activated and prevented a major dysfunction, but
nevertheless, there was a problem with the wiring,”
Medelius describes.

Even though technicians used a device called a multimeter
to measure the electrical current to find which wire
had a fault, it could not pinpoint exactly where on the
wire the fault was located. For that, technicians had to
visually inspect the wire.

“Sometimes they would have to remove
the whole wire assembly and visually inspect
every single wire. It was a very tedious operation
because the wires are behind cabinets.
They go all over the place in the shuttle,”
says Medelius. “NASA needed an instrument
capable of telling them exactly where
the faults were occurring.”

To meet NASA’s needs for a highly
precise device to inspect electrical power
bundles, wires, and connectors, Medelius
devised the SWR. “It came down to what
was affected when a wire is short circuited
or opened,” he says. “We worked out a few
equations based on physical principles.”
The SWR proved very sensitive, and the
technology was patented.

Technology Transfer

Kennedy made the technology available for commercial
licensing. Corona, California-based Eclypse International
was immediately intrigued by the technology, due in
part to the 1996 explosion and crash of TWA flight
800. Eclypse had worked with the White House-led Air
Transport Safety and Rulemaking Committee on the
investigation of the accident, which, according to the
National Transportation Safety Board, was most likely
caused by a short circuit in its wiring. Chris Teal, marketing
director at the company, says, “We were trying to find
a technology to test the wiring without being intrusive
or destructive.”

After obtaining an exclusive license for the SWR,
Eclypse refined the SWR for commercial use by incorporating
an easy-to-use keypad and making the device more
rugged. “The first version was hard plastic that shattered if
you dropped it. We made it tough, so none of the connectors
or casing would break if it fell,” says Teal.

Benefits

Originally featured in Spinoff 2005, Eclypse has had
many years of success with the NASA technology, which is
now in widespread use by the military and commercial airlines,
among others. As a small business that started with
just 6 employees, Eclypse now employs approximately
30 people.

Called ESP+, Eclypse’s spinoff technology takes less
than 5 seconds to locate a fault. “It’s the fastest and easiest
to use hand-held wire tester available today,” says Teal.

Available as a standalone piece of equipment or as
part of Eclypse’s Electrical Component Analysis System
(ECAS), ESP+ provides step-by-step instructions to
guide a user on the type and location of an electrical
wiring fault.

“Mechanics who have never touched wiring can now fix
it,” says Teal. “All they have to do is start the test, and in a
matter of seconds, it will tell them where the fault is within 18 inches. Electrical checks that used to take two folks 8 hours can now be done in 45 minutes with one person.”

According to the company, the US Army purchased
300 ESP+ devices to include in their helicopter battle
damage and assessment repair kits. In addition, one of the
military programs using ECAS reported a savings of $2.19
million on development costs.

ESP+ is currently employed throughout the United
States and abroad to check the health of wiring in commercial
and military aircraft, submarines, sea vessels, and
even presidential helicopters. A sampling of commercial
customers includes Sikorsky, Boeing, Raytheon, Qantas
Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, American
Airlines, and FedEx. Military customers include the
United States Navy, the United States Marine Corps,
Australian Defense, the South Korean Army, the Spanish
Navy, and Portuguese Air Forces.

In the future, Eclypse plans to promote its technology
for routine maintenance of system wiring. “Our core
technology and philosophy is to handle the electrical from
the date it is put in service to the date of its retirement,”
says Teal. The company also aims to attract the interest
of networking and mainframe distribution entities and
similar complex electrical industries to help ensure normal
operations for their electrical wiring.

Today, Medelius says he appreciates seeing how NASA
technology helps not only NASA, but everybody—even
himself. “I fly a lot, and it is comforting to know that what
we did helped to make flight safer. It’s a good feeling, not
only as an engineering accomplishment, but from a personal
standpoint.”

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